The Beta version of Drupal 8.2 has arrived and is ready for testing.
There are many upgrades to the developer experience, but what changes will end-users see?
Here are 7 improvements that users will see in Drupal 8.2. (Update: here are 3 more!)
Improvement #1. Revisions are on by default
This is a small, but useful change. All content types now have revisions enabled by default:
Improvement #2. The Place Blocks module
This is an experimental module that you'll need to enable. The module is designed to add a visual page builder element to Drupal.
- Enable the "Place block" module.
- You'll see a "Place block" link to the admin toolbar:
- Click the link and you'll see the theme layout with a "Place block" button in each region:
- Click the button, and you'll get a choice of blocks to add:
Improvement #3. Link to items after saving
Whenever you save an item in Drupal 8, you'll now see a direct link to the item:
Improvement #4. Contact forms have a redirect link
With modules like Webform still waiting for a Drupal 8 release, the focus is improving the default contact forms.
In Drupal 8.2, you can now redirect users to a thank you page, after they submit a form:
Improvement #5. View modes for your comments
This is a feature that was left half-finished in earlier version of Drupal 8. It was possible to create view modes for your comments, but they were very hard to use. With Drupal 8.2, you can choose a view mode from inside the "Manage Display" for your content types. Here's how it works:
- Go to Structure > Display modes > View modes.
- Structure > Comment types > Manage display.
- Click "Custom Display Settings".
- You can now choose the view mode you just created, as in the image below:
- Click "Save".
- You can now re-arrange the fields for this view mode.
- Click "Save" when you have arranged the fields.
- Go to Structure > Content types > Manage display.
- You can now choose a view mode for your comments.
Improvement #6. CKEditor looks more like Drupal
If you use CKEditor's inline editing, the pop-ups will now look much more like Drupal than CKEditor.
Here's an image showing their appearance in Drupal 8.1:
And here is the Drupal 8.2 version:
Improvement #7. The migration path
There are three "experimental" migration modules in the Drupal 8 core still: Migrate, Migrate Drupal, and Migrate Upgrade UI.
They've been improved in Drupal 8.2, but where does that leave the migration path?
- The Drupal 6 to Drupal 8 migration is now complete and can be used!
- The Drupal 7 to Drupal 8 migration is still not finished. There are over a dozen critical issues left to solve before the D7 to D8 path is considered stable.
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